Microsoft has published the release notes for System Center 2012 R2 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). There are some important notes there, but I thought I’d highlight a few that stick out:
- For file server clusters that were not created by VMM, deploying the VMM agent to file server nodes will enable Multipath I/O (MPIO) and claim devices. This operation will cause the server to restart. Deploying the VMM agent to all nodes in a Scale-out File Server cluster will cause all nodes to restart.
- Generation 2 virtual machines are not supported
- If System Center 2012 R2 VMM is installed on Windows Server 2012, you cannot manage Spaces storage devices that are attached to a Scale-out File server. Spaces storage requires an updated SMAPI that is included with Windows Server 2012 R2 release version.
- The Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) feature will be removed from the System Center 2012 R2 release.
- Windows Server supports storage tiering with Storage Spaces. However, VMM does not manage tiering policy.
- Windows Server supports specifying write-back cache amount with Storage Spaces. However, VMM does not manage this.
- Performing a Hyper-V Replica failover followed by a cluster migration causes the VMRefresher service to update the wrong virtual manager, putting the virtual machines into an inconsistent state.
- VMM does not provide centralized management of World Wide Name (WWM) pools.
- Failing over and migrating a replicated virtual machine on a cluster node might result in an unstable configuration
And there’s more. Some have workarounds (see the original article). Some do not, e.g. removal of P2V from VMM 2012 R2 or lack of support for G2 VMs. In those cases:
- Use 3rd party tools or DISK2VHD (no DISK2VHDX tool) for P2V
- Continue to use G1 VMs if using VMM. Remember that there is no conversion between G1 and G2
Thanks for the highlights. That’s so strange that VMM doesn’t support G2 VMs. I wonder if that will be an SP1 feature or something.
No more service packs. Instead, we have a new release “cadence”.
No P2V? I thought that was the main reason to deploy VMM in the first place..
You’ve got some serious reading to do. That’s just one small, albeit important, feature of VMM.
“Generation 2 virtual machines are not supported”
Do you think this is something that will be fixed by the time the product ships or is it by design? I would be surprised it stays this way because of the hype Gen2 VMs got at TechEd.
It will stay this way – they only had 10 months to develop up to TechEd and I’d rather have a focus on bug testing/fixing than in building up lists of new features. I’d say support won’t come until vNext.
Have you heard of any reasoning given for retiring p2v? I personally use this feature frequently.
Frankly, I’d be sleeping much better if MS actually spent time on fixing the bugs in SC2012SP1 instead of releasing new version, but I realize that’s not going to happen. So once again, SC will not be able to keep up with Windows Server features and development speed as was the case for SC2008R2 and 2012(SP1). There goes the one-tool-to-manage-them-all approach, which MS and consultants/lectors promote so much.
I was (foolishly) optimistic when 2012 SP1 came out hoping that things would (mostly) work as advertised, but the amount of bugs and lack of features that Hyper-V or Windows Server itself support is rather astonishing.
With this short release cycle, I fear 2012 R2 even more…
I’ve created a Gen 2 VM in HyperV 2012 R2. I now want to clone it, but SCVMM 2012 SP1 says that none of the (Server 2012 R2) servers (including itself) that I want to clone it to is suitable as
Virtualization platform on host ….l doesn’t allow boot and system volumes to be on a disk attached to SCSI adapter. Disk at the location (SCSI, 0, 1) must be attached to the IDE bus for the machine to boot up and work properly.
However Gen 2 VMs can only have SCSI drives and SCVMM 2012 R2 doesn’t actually seem to be out yet. Any ideas?
You need SCVMM 2012 R2. It is out – went on sale on Nov 1st.
Wait, I’m confused. This link says SACVMM 2012 R2 supports Generation 2 VMs?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn246490.aspx
“Support for generation 2 virtual machines: You can now create generation 2 virtual machines and virtual machine templates…”
Look at the date of the post. The clue is there.
I still confused why G2 is not included in service template any specific reason by MS why G2 is not included in Service Template